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M12

San Francisco, California · Invests in US; Europe · Website

SeedSeries AB2B SaaSDeveloper ToolsData & AnalyticsCybersecurityHardware & DevicesFrontier TechEnterprise SoftwareDeveloper Tools & InfrastructureSecurity & CybersecuritySemiconductors & Hardware

Thesis

Strategic corporate venture fund leveraging Microsoft's resources to help portfolio companies innovate and scale. Tightly aligned with Microsoft's cloud, AI, security, and enterprise software strategies.

Likely not a fit for

Consumer-only applications; companies that cannot benefit from Microsoft partnership; non-technical founding teams

How they invest

Lead or follow
Usually leads
Typical decision
~1 month
Warm intro
Preferred
Involvement
Takes a board seat
Fund status
Actively deploying
Decision process
Partnership vote

Partners & team

9 contacts on file

CC

Cheryl Cheng

General PartnerManaging Partner · Primary contact

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c•••@m1•••.vc

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SH

Shun Hagiwara

PartnerPartner

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s•••@m1•••.vc

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MG

Michelle Gonzalez

PrincipalCorporate Vice President and Global Head

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m•••@m1•••.vc

LinkedIn profile

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TG

Todd Graham

General PartnerManaging Partner

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t•••@m1•••.vc

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MS

Michael Stewart

General PartnerManaging Partner

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m•••@m1•••.vc

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PL

Peter Lenke

General PartnerManaging Partner

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p•••@m1•••.vc

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JW

James Wu

PartnerPartner

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j•••@m1•••.vc

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AD

Alan Du

PartnerPartner

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a•••@m1•••.vc

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TC

Tero Collin

Platform & OpsHead of Fund Operations and Strategy

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t•••@m1•••.vc

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Portfolio

UnbabelEnterprise Software

Unbabel is an artificial intelligence-powered human translation platform that combines Neural Machine Translation with machine learning and a crowdsourced model to provide fast, efficient, high-quality translations. It integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, enabling businesses to communicate effectively across languages.

InworldEnterprise Software

Inworld provides the world's best realtime AI models for consumer-scale applications, with integrated orchestration and experiments that drive measurably better outcomes such as higher retention, engagement, time spent, and customer satisfaction. Their technology has powered multimodal applications, companions, agents, and characters for notable clients including NVIDIA, Microsoft Xbox, and Logitech Streamlabs.

Space and TimeEnterprise Software

Space and Time is a decentralized platform that provides a secure data infrastructure for onchain finance, enabling the integration of offchain and onchain data through zero-knowledge proofs and SQL queries.

appliedintuition.comRobotics Automation

Applied Intuition is the vehicle intelligence company with the tools, Vehicle OS, and autonomy stacks for creating safe, AI-powered vehicle experiences.

Arize.aiEnterprise Software

Arize AI is an LLM observability and evaluation platform designed to help developers monitor, debug, and continuously improve their AI agents and systems, particularly in the context of complex AI models like LLMs and multimodal systems.

Arkose LabsMedia Entertainment

Arkose Labs is a company focused on virtual climbing coaching. Arkose.com is a French website promoting climbing challenges and achievements.

AuthomizeSecurity Cyber

Authomize, now known as Delinea, is an identity authorization and privileged access management leader providing seamless security for modern, hybrid enterprises. The platform secures all types of identities—human, machine, and AI—while managing access and detecting identity-based threats in real time.

BytewaxEnterprise Software

Bytewax is a powerful stream processing framework designed for data scientists and engineers to build real-time data pipelines quickly and efficiently. Leveraging a Python library built on a high-performance Rust backend, Bytewax simplifies the development of scalable stream processing applications without the need for complex infrastructure.

CodefreshEnterprise Software

Codefresh is a GitOps platform designed to streamline CI/CD processes for Kubernetes and microservices, enabling teams to automate and manage their software delivery lifecycle effectively.

Contrast SecuritySecurity Cyber

Contrast Security is a code security platform designed for developers to secure applications throughout the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), protecting against targeted application security attacks.

etalyticsClimate Clean Energy

Next-Gen AI-Driven Energy Management Solutions that help industrial energy system operators cut costs, reduce emissions, and build resilience through digital twins, predictive analytics, and AI-driven optimizations.

Reach SecuritySecurity Cyber

Reach Security is pioneering AI-Native Exposure Management, helping organizations reduce risk by optimizing the use of their existing cybersecurity tools to identify and remediate security misconfigurations and gaps.

Recent activity

M12 in the news

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Research briefRead more
M12 Research Document Investment Thesis M12 is Microsoft's corporate venture capital fund, founded in 2016 as Microsoft Ventures and rebranded to M12 in 2018. The fund's investment thesis is tightly aligned with Microsoft's strategic interests, leveraging the company's cutting-edge tools, services, and expertise to help portfolio companies innovate and scale faster. Rather than operating as a trad

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